A Cycling Advocate's Nirvana

In Belgium they truly "get" it. They understand how how to live without the car. It certainly doesn't look like they are suffering deprivation as a result. Bikes and more bikes everywhere. Gaggles of teenage girls, older, stately looking gentlemen, well-heeled movers and shakers cruising to and fro on two wheels . By golly I even passed a convoy of aged 60+ white haired ole gals out for a country spin together. I kid you not. I could not make this stuff up in my wildest imagination.

So allow me to describe for you some of this life style's manifestations.... I would say there are 200 bikes for every car on the road, but it could be 300. People don't just refrain from driving their cars, they don't own them. Morning rush hour does exist and it is dangerous but the danger involves bikes and buses and not a helmet in sight. Overflowing, double-length buses rush back and forth around town dodging cyclists as they merge, cross, cut-off, and pass on roads that were originally built to a width that would accommodate horse and carriage. Yet road rage seems not to exist. Bike lanes inside the city are a matter of course, and come with their very own bike stop lights and cycle-exclusive, round-abouts. Bike headlights, tail lights and bells are legislated and enforced.

Bike rental is cheap, 17 euro for three days. So off I went to explore the countryside. I bought a bike-by-number map of the region that laid out all of the bike paths that connect all small towns and cities. Most paths are not alongside roads but their own independent entities cutting through scenic pasture lands. My map contained over 600 kilometers of bike path and this map was just 1 of 6or 7 for the country. It was impossible to get lost with the map because the numbers on the map corresponded to the numbers on the paths, very well marked. I managed to spend two days, from late morning until the sun went down, leisurely (as in less than 10 mph) tooling around, drinking it in. This is the perfect place to take kids on multi-day tours. It is safe and there is a village to stop at every 10 k or so, a farm animal to stop and pet every few hundred meters, WWII bunkers to explore.

We attended a series C1 cyclo-cross race. This event was well attended by young and old alike, most sporting their obligatory galoshes. The fans were as fervent as any respectable crowd at a futbol match in England, minus the bad manners.

The highlight of Tony's trip surely occurred at a pub in which he was drinking (too much) deliciously hoppy (his words), Belgium beer and engaging in a passionate conversation with a local about this race and cycling in general. The local was so impressed that an American knew so much about Belgium's national sport that he insisted on buying him a sampling of Belgium's best beer. It was at this point that I excused myself and returned to my hotel to read my book in peaceful, non-smokey solitude and allow Tony a night out on the town with the boys.